Chasing Shadows
by daisy-chains-and-bow-ties
Summary: Ethel spent a year in Azkaban that changed her, and everyone around her seems to be rushing to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. All she wants is to be left alone, but she's like a car crash people can't help slowing down to look at as they pass. OC/ Charlie W. Bit rubbish at summaries. R & R appreciated. This was written in collaboration with The Lost Art of Romance.
1. The Leaky Cauldron

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. **

The Leaky Cauldron, the most famous wizarding pub in the world, squashed between a bookstore and a hamburger bar on one the busiest streets in Muggle London, harbouring a constant aroma of unwashed fur and spilled blood, and of course the heavy scent of booze. It was hardly any roomier inside than it looked on the outside, but once you got past the bar the inn spread out quite a bit, with over fifty rooms squashed along the length of the barrier between Muggle London and Diagon Alley.

Ethel watched as a wormy-looking old witch swayed back and forth on a grimy little stage, wailing into the microphone, and even the hags couldn't enjoy the tune. Bill had found them a table as far away from the entertainment as possible, but even the musty old corner stall they were bundled into did nothing to dim the sound of what was possibly the worst professional singer in the wizarding world.

"I really expected this to be more of a party", Ethel said drearily, propping her aching head on her upturned palm, dotted with tiny burns, the fruit of her largely unsuccessful alchemical experiments. She'd given Snape the worst time of his life in Hogwarts, but now, as her mother excelled in pointing out, it was about time she found a real job and left the past where it belonged, but Ethel couldn't do that. As usual, her mother couldn't wrap her tiny mind around that.

She wasn't the worst sort of pure blood witch you could imagine. Their house was clean and it had windows, which was quite a step up from most ancient wizard houses. Ethel had set their house elf free when she was six, though the dopey creature insisted upon hanging around anyway, albeit under much more acceptable terms. The entire family had a history of fantastic achievements, but all Ethel had ever been was a disappointment.

"I should have warned you", Bill grinned, "When people say 'party at the Leaky Cauldron', they really mean, 'let's see who can get drunk quickly enough to hold onto their sanity'". He seemed to think that he'd made the most fantastic joke, but Ethel wasn't amused.

She attempted to clean the glass of the window above her head, to no avail. "I swear", she said angrily, "Some of the evenings in The Hog's Head are better than this. Can we leave?" She didn't wait for Bill to reply, she simply stood, gathering the many ends of her adventurous attempt at fashioning a dress out of her curtains, and stomped through the establishment, mindless of the cries of pain and anger that followed her. Bill lunged out of the seat and followed her, apologising all the way.

The dustbins out back were swarming with flies, and the sultry air did nothing to clear her head after the frankly poisonous air inside the bar. She tapped the bricks with her wand, a twisted thing, eleven inches long with a core of dragon heartstring. According to Olivander it had been a fairly nasty dragon. He'd given it to her with an air of concern; no doubt he'd expected her to be landed straight into Slytherin and take the fast track to Death Eater-hood, but she'd surprised everyone by being placed in Ravenclaw.

Her mother had remarked in her letter, "Well, I suppose it could be worse. And there I'd though you fit for nothing but a dead end career in some arsehole of nowhere department in the Ministry. Of course, you could still end up like that, so don't forget to study. I know how you can be, always fiddling about with high-grade explosives and food dye, but it's time to knuckle down now and try not to get kicked out".

Suffice it to say, Ethel had almost been overcome with the show of support. And now here she was, stuck on a stupid pity date with Bill, who'd spent most of his school career trying to ruin her life, quite successfully too. He'd done everything from hiding all her things in the room of requirement to persuading all the paintings in the school to laugh at her for an entire day whenever she walked past them. You had to admire his creativity. Her inspired response had been to punch him and threaten to fling him off the Astronomy tower. Several sessions with Madam Pomfry and a concerned Ministry official later, she'd managed to prove that she wasn't actually a psychopath. Mind you, that had mostly been cunning evasion and outright lies. Ethel was definitely a psychopath, just not the kind that concerned itself with dull, petty violence.

Now she was two years out of Hogwarts and friendless apart from her arch enemy, who, she had no doubt, had been coerced into taking her out through a dreaded collaboration of his mother and her mother. Neither of them had managed to hate her properly, it seemed. Ms Weasley was a formidable witch. Ethel personally didn't understand how a former Slytherin and a former Griffindor could get along so stunningly, and she didn't bother herself thinking on it too much. The only part of their friendship that worried her was that they seemed convinced that she and Bill were fated to love one another for the rest of eternity. Ethel didn't want to be a part of that forever, and so far her attempts to prove to her mother that she had more interest in Yoda (their family hippogriff) than Bill had been unsuccessful, but she was in it for the long run.

"Ethel", Bill called, bursting through the door, "Ethel, come on. If I don't do this-" He stopped as it dawned on him what he had just started to say.

Ethel snorted as he twiddled his fingers anxiously, as though wondering if she would notice, "Yeah, Bill, I do realise that your mother if forcing you to be here. My mother is doing the same, only probably in a much more subtle way. Why don't you go back inside and I'll tell her that I had a great time, okay? I'm just going for a walk".

Bill made to shrug into his long coat, which Ethel suspected saw its best days about fifty years ago, "I'll come with you", he said eagerly, suddenly rabid to be the perfect date.

"No", she said firmly, "I want to be alone".

Instead of pretending to be hurt, Bill smiled, "That's your problem, Ethel", he said, shaking his head, "You always want to be alone".

Ethel, as always, abandoned the normal reaction and instead felt anger rising inside of her. "Fuck you Bill", she screamed, suddenly furious. She turned her back on him and ran down the length of Diagon Alley at breakneck speed, her sensible shoes slipping on the wet cobblestones. He was just a little bit right, as always, but Ethel didn't see her need to be alone as a problem. It was the only thing keeping her alive.


	2. The Girl With Eyes So Blue

Ethel caught sight of herself in a shop window, tendrils of frayed fabric drifting out behind her, ripped tights and hair that looked as though something had been living in it for at least three months. She looked as though she'd just gotten out of Azkaban. She shivered just thinking of that place, the perpetual chill in the walls, and the wide eyes stares following her shuddering form through the halls, Dementors gliding carelessly on either side of her, their scaly hands poised inches above her shoulders. She could still feel his eyes on her back, that strange, guilty look he'd given her as she shuffled into the cell and the iron clanged shut behind her.

It wasn't really surprising that most of her family were worried about her, the half-crazy Ravenclaw girl who'd spent that year in Azkaban with the Death Eaters howling in her ears, shrill screaming fading to demented cackling and the slow, wet sobbing of those too sane to survive the darkness. He'd visited her every week, bringing chocolate and books, on one occasion a colourful throw to make her cot a bit cheerier. Sometimes she thought he'd forgotten what she'd done.

Diagon Alley was freezing, and a brisk wind was blowing, biting through the tears in her ensemble. There were several candles flickering in the windows above the shops, but the street was empty, the buildings huddled against the cold. She meandered along, not shivering, because the cold was comfortable, it reminded her of a place where things had been simpler, secure in their horrifying starkness.

"You look like you could use a jacket". Ethel jumped, catching her boot on the uneven cobbles. She fell backwards with a very unattractive shriek. Her head smashed against the stone and her vision went blank for a moment. When she opened her eyes, there was a man standing over her, stocky, tanned, wearing faded blue jeans and a jumper with a red and pink pattern on it. She realised with a startled groan that her head was on his knees, and instantly squirmed away from him, feeling the bruises already on her back and a heavy pounding behind her eyes.

He was speaking, but she couldn't hear him, her head was buzzing with pain and embarrassment. It had been a long time since she'd felt that vulnerable, and she didn't like it. Finally, his words came into focus, "I'm so sorry, I honestly didn't mean to startle you. This is what I get for trying to be cool!" He stopped talking, probably realising that she wasn't the least bit interested in apologies. He looked at her form beneath his lashes, smiling nervously, "Can I, um, buy you a drink, or take you home?"

Ethel shook her head, "Better not, I don't live anywhere you want to go, trust me". He opened his mouth, probably to object, as they all seemed so eager to, but she silenced him with a shake of her head, "I mean it, I'll be fine. Just scurry on home and congratulate yourself on not getting involved with someone like me. I'm bad news, okay. It's a long established fact". Ethel looked at him then, really looked, and realised she knew him better than he realised. _Charlie Weasley, eh?_ That family seemed intent upon not letting her alone, almost rivalling her own in that respect.

He looked at her two, and she saw that same sudden realisation and creeping horror that came when everyone realised who she was. The fugitive, the murderess who'd gotten off so very lightly, even after all she'd done. Running and hiding for almost a year, fresh out of her sixth year in Hogwarts, the case everyone had followed, that stunning, intriguing mystery. "You're Ethel Wright, aren't you?"

She didn't bother replying. Judging herself steady enough to walk, she stomped off in the general direction of Knockturn Alley, where she kept a tiny apartment filled with items of little consequence, as the Ministry occasionally dropped in for a visit, seeing as she'd just barely escaped admittance to St Mungo's psych wing. There were plenty of books, a warm bed when she grew tired of the freezing contraption her family had somehow decided was fit for actual habitation. Her house was largely and underground affair, full of monstrous spiders and suspicious corners you simply didn't invade upon. Ethel missed the soaring heights of Ravenclaw tower, those fabulous windows overlooking the grounds, the study groups and strange holes where a girl could sit with a book and ignore the increasingly strict summons from Professor Flitwick.

Charlie followed her as she wobbled along, clawing her hair off of her face, attempting to run her fingers through it and getting them firmly stuck. "Hey, don't charge off", he called.

"Why not?" She asked shrilly, "All I am to you is a ghost story. Parents tell their kids to be good or they'll end up like me. Sad and insane, living in the darkest hole London can provide, with the shadows of the Dementors still following on her heels, with those wide, mad, china blue eyes, red rimmed and empty". She remembered seeing her eyes staring back at her from the papers people brandished at her as they led her through the Ministry to face justice with his hand almost touching her arm and those kind eyes narrowed. She remembered how scared she'd been. Seventeen, facing an eternity in hell on Earth, felling her soul already fading away as those chains slid around her arms, binding her to her fate.

"I think you're innocent, dammit!" He called, "I never believed any of it". Neither did he, in the end, her captor, but he'd stacked the evidence so neat and so high there was no escaping it, no challenging the facts. It was just a hunch, that's all her innocence would ever be. A far-flung belief held by the people who think they know what happened.

She turned suddenly and he almost charged into her, "I don't care what you believe, because to everyone else I am and will always be the girl with the blue eyes, those wild eyes, who ran out of road and got off oh so easily. The Ravenclaw who should have been a Slytherin, because there was nothing logical about what she did, there was only rage and fire and blood, and that's all I'll ever be, okay? So don't run after me with your 'understanding' because I don't care, because deep down I'm still cold, I'll always be cold, and nothing anyone can say will ever be enough to get rid of that. It'll never go away, and I'll never be Ethel Wright, the girl who used to dress so nicely and came top of her class in everything. I'm just the mistake, the one who slipped through the cracks, the fourth most known name in the wizarding world, and not at all for the right reasons".

He stopped and stared at her, something akin to pity in his eyes. Ethel smiled triumphantly, as though she'd won something, but she only ever lost. "Leave. Me. Alone", she hissed, and spun around the corner down into the impenetrable darkness of Knockturn Alley, where she knew he would not follow.


	3. Ice Cream

**A/N: Just for clarity, Harry is about to begin his first year in Hogwarts. Don't forget to throw me a review if you like it :)**

Chapter 3 – Ice Cream

The sunlight woke her and she jolted awake, reminded of the way the light used to filter through the bars on those days when the sea was calm, and the stench that hung in the humid air. She struggled from beneath the sheets piled with abandon atop the bed. Ethel liked to be warm these days, now that she could manage it, with a bit of meat on her bones. She remembered looking in the mirror at her mother's house after waking up from the sleep of the dead. It had been long and dreamless, the best she'd had in years.

"Ugh", she remarked, wending through tottering piles of books to her closet, which was bulging at the seams with worn jeans, ratty Weird Sisters shirts and all her failed experiments in clothing design. She'd been wearing a particularly gnarled creation last night, and it lay discarded just inside the door, bolted firmly shut with a hex hanging moodily around it. She dug out her most comfortable jeans and a t-shirt that was big on her even before Azkaban. She threw on one of Mrs Weasley's jumpers and dug around for her purse, locating it pulled halfway into a mouse hole.

Ethel disarmed her door and glanced briefly in the mirror on the way out and found her vocabulary unfit to articulate just how bad her bed-head was. She looked like a cross between Severus Snape and a Hag on steroids, but that was about as good as her hair could manage, so she yanked open the door and stomped into the hall. As usual, the collection of ragged and unwashed misfits who spent their days smoking and staring at each other in the gloomy hall shot her their best glares.

She waggled her wand vaguely at them as she shuffled past, sticking her purse in her pocket. It was freezing outside, in the dark and mouldy depths of Knockturn Alley, where the indecent (in every sense of the word) members of magical society spent their days having intense conversations with walls and attempting to sell fingernails (though they _had_ come in useful once or twice). It had a general air of squalor and abandonment, though the people never left, or otherwise had the good sense to pack up and leave. They hardly ever moved.

Once in Diagon Alley, the air brightened considerably. It was still a week before the new term at Hogwarts would begin, but there were a few families dragging children from shop to shop. She found herself drawn to the Apothecary, with its mouldering jars of frogspawn and pails full of gleaming black beetles. The shopkeeper knew her. Well, everyone in the wizarding world knew her, but this witch smiled as she wandered in, shaking her head drowsily. She moved ponderously over to the rare ingredients display. There was Chimera hair, actual dragon heartstring, burning bright in a magical containment field, and even a crystal phial of Demiguise hair, which is used to spin invisibility cloaks.

"Wow", Ethel said, her nose inches from the glass.

"Aren't they", the witch said, a hint of pride in her voice. Ethel raised her head slowly, trying to hide her surprise that the shopkeeper was talking to her. She wasn't entirely sure, but she had a feeling that it wasn't a particularly popular activity, locally. Most people looked right through her or spoke in monosyllables when they were forced to speak to her.

"Oh yes!" Ethel continued, as though nothing especially significant was happening, "But unfortunately I've come for far more basic ingredients. I'm experimenting with Ageing potions again".

The witch nodded enthusiastically, "I was telling my husband last night about your project. There's a huge market out there for a potion like that!" Ethel had been working on a potion to make people look younger, not just temporarily. In theory, her potion would gradually reduce wrinkles, lesions, livers spots, until they faded entirely, and permanently. She hadn't, however, known that the apothecary knew about any of it.

"It's nice to be busy again", Ethel said, moving away from the rare ingredients and over toward the more commonplace magical plants: gillyweed and bowtruckle trimmings and lemongrass.

"Yes, yes, of course", the witch said enthusiastically, then she stopped, and there was a silence. Ethel prodded at the ingredients slowly. "I didn't mean it like…" the witch began, "It's just, I see you around quite a bit, and you always look so sad, but when you walk in here, caught up in your work, your face just shines".

Ethel smiled at her, trying to communicate that she was fine. People made assumptions, and the witch was quite correct in any case. Everything Ethel did was just running away. It was all she could do after all this time. "Thanks", she said quietly, "I didn't think anyone noticed me like that". People stared at her all the time, though it was becoming less pronounced, as they forgot, but there were scarce few who actually cared.

She collected the ingredients she needed and paid for them, pretending not to notice that she'd been given a discount. The street was properly bright now, and there was a steady stream of traffic heading towards Gringotts as it opened its doors. She joined the crowds, pulling away as she reached Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. Florean knew her, and he was another one of the decent people in Diagon Alley. He prepared her morning ice cream without bothering to take her order, and passed it to her with an extra flake. She mouthed a thank you as she passed him her money and he waved his hand, 'think nothing of it'.

She turned, her mind on a long morning sitting on the roof of her flat, reading a book in that little deck chair, catching the few rays of sunlight that made it onto the freezing terrace, but something stopped her in her tracks. He sat with his leg stretched out in front of him, staring furiously at his raspberry mint ice-cream, but one mechanical eye was fixed on her, and his mouth was turned up into a smile. It was Mad-Eye Moody, her captor and reluctant confidant.

Though her stomach twisted, it didn't take her long to make up her mind. Sighing, she ducked past a waiter carrying a tray of sundaes to a family exhausted from their early morning shopping, noticing persistent heat on the back of her next as the summer heat set in properly, and sat down opposite him. She licked her ice-cream, regarding him speculatively.

"What brings you here, old enemy?" she asked.

She grunted, massaging his leg aggressively, "Boredom, mostly", he growled.

Ethel raised her eyebrows, "I didn't think retirement would suit you, but this isn't an outing. You don't go on outings, so what's wrong? Are they trying to send me back to the Dementors again?"

"No", he wheezed, "Not yet, anyway, though Lucius is kicking up a fuss, as usual".

"Well, being an annoying, muggle-hating dick is a full-time occupation", Ethel shrugged, "What is it then?"

He hesitated, "The Potter boy is going to Hogwarts this year. Dumbledore doesn't think much of my advice, but precautions must be taken".

"Oh, Mad-Eye!" Ethel began.

"It's not a serious threat", he said gruffly, "But I can't cover the train myself, not with Dumbledore's express instructions not to go within 100 metres of Platform 9 ¾ , and he isn't one to mince his words".

"I know", Ethel reminded him. She gave Mad-Eye a pleading look, "What makes you think that people won't recognise me?"

He shrugged, "Wear a cloak, you'll be invisible. I can't walk down the street without making children cry".

"Why don't you talk to Nymphadora?"

Mad-Eye scowled, "She told me I was being stupid".

"Quite correctly", Ethel added, but she knew she owed it to Mad-Eye to skulk around the Hogwarts Express for half an hour. It wasn't as though she was busy. "Fine", she groaned, "But you owe me a Butterbeer, or something stronger".

He raised a bushy eyebrow, "I owe you more than that".

"No you don't", she insisted. Mad-Eye said nothing. He stared around at the families, a few students were sat around desperately trying to get through their summer homework. Everyone was taking advantage of the sun while it lasted.

"This bloody heat", Mad-Eye grumbled, shifting in his layers of gear. He looked like a villain out of a steampunk novel. She'd always liked that.

Ethel licked her ice cream, "It's better than the cold". Mad-Eye sobered immediately, even more so than was his general state of being, and she regretted saying it immediately, but his thoughts were liable to jump to their colourful history at the slightest reference to her time in Azkaban. "I don't blame you", she said seriously.

"I should hope not. If we both blamed me it might be too much to handle", and he ducked his head in a distinctly uncharacteristic fashion and his eye stared up at her, like a child watching to see what their parents would do upon finding the kitchen flooded, or the radiators drawn upon.

"I know who to blame", Ethel said darkly.

Mad-Eye reached across the table and took her hand, squeezing it the way he used to, through the bars on Sunday afternoons, "We'll get him", he told her, "I may be retired, but I'm not idle".

Thinking of her 'mission', Ethel chuckled, "No, clearly you haven't managed to get the hang of that".

"One day", he promised insincerely, "By the sea, maybe".

"You hate sand", Ethel reminded him.

"Oh, with a fury", he grinned, his scarred face creasing like an old leather boot. Mad-Eye wasn't so old, but the war had aged him. She'd seen what it had done to Sirius Black, on the few occasions she'd had reason to be led past his cell, with the Dementors looming in the passage outside.

But it softened then, into a mask of tenderness that was so alien it made her tongue pause on its way to slurp the dregs of ice cream from the soggy cone, "You're a good girl, you know", he said.

She laughed, "Well don't go asking the rest of the world".

"Damn the rest of the world!" he bellowed, loud enough to make their fellow customers stare.

Ethel nodded enthusiastically, "Who needs them?"

"Not me", said Mad-Eye, glaring at the still-gawking patrons.

Ethel smiled at him. He was, perhaps, the only good person left in her life. She dropped her cone onto the table and it collapsed upon itself, attracting a wasp which had been buzzing lazily about an old witch's head.

"Nor me", Ethel said, watching as life moved around her. They didn't realise how lucky they were, these people, but neither had she. She was far past blaming the world for her mistakes, but all the same she couldn't help but feel jealous, watching a boy with wild, curly hair bent over his textbook, wearing a blue and white tie over a sky-blue shirt.

He was scrawling equations in a spidery script, predicting the effectiveness of some spell or other. Arithmancy had been fun, back in the day. She sat back and looked up at the gorgeous buildings lining either side of the street, and for the first time in a long time, she felt content. Mad-Eye smiled at her, scratching the intact side of his nose. She was still beautiful, with that raven black hair and those blue eyes.

They sat there for most of the day, talking, arguing, howling with laughter, sometimes sitting in silence, and it was good, for once, and nice, to try and forget.


	4. The Boy Who Lived

The taxi dropped her just outside the station. It was drizzling, so she had an excuse to pull up her hood. The wand Olivander had been so very reluctant to give her was stuck in her pocket, secured with an immovable charm, and in any case, to the bewildered muggles standing around watching as parents heaved trunks onto trolleys and children discussed Quidditch loudly, it was just a stick of wood. There were far more bizarre things to gawp at. Ethel took a deep breath, and started walking, her boots slapping through puddles, throwing up droplets of black water onto the legs of her jeans.

She followed a man wearing a long cloak with embroidered silver stars into the station scanned the length of the platform, standing still as magical families thundered past her. The train wouldn't leave for another half-an-hour, but there was an air of panic nonetheless, and the noise level would only increase once she got through the barrier, but first she had to wait for him to arrive.

Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, when everyone else had died. No one knew why or how a child could have withstood a killing curse from the most powerful and most twisted wizard to be born for an age. Some people still claimed that Dumbledore had been more powerful, and that eventually the two would have met and that would have been the end of the war, but Ethel couldn't believe it. She'd been nine when she watched The Dark Lord kill her father.

He'd flung out an arm ropy with veins and in a flash of green light her father was just and empty shell. He'd turned to look at her, staring wide-eyed into the vile, slimy abyss behind his eyes. Then Voldemort had knelt down in front of her and grasped her two skinny arms in his long, pale hands, "My dear", he whispered, "Some things are necessary, even things like this. Children like you must be protected". He had wanted her to like him, because she would make up the new generation of young witches to whom he would impart all the dark knowledge a generation needed to enslave millions.

She couldn't imagine him losing to Dumbledore and if it hadn't been for Harry Potter he would have continued killing and killing until everyone brave enough to stand against him was dead, except for Dumbledore. He would have been broken, and The Dark Lord would have beaten him. He was too powerful, too great. He'd been unstoppable, until someone had stopped him, and it hadn't been Dumbledore. It had been Harry Potter.

And he was starting school today. There would be betting, she knew, on what house he would be sorted into. Those Death Eaters still at large and in a mental state to give a damn would be feigning disinterest while secretly hoping for the boy to be put into Slytherin. If he was, people would panic. The rumours had been flying for years, just beneath the surface of mainstream media. A child shouldn't have been capable of defeating Lord Voldemort and that was a fact, so the question stood. How had Harry Potter managed it?

There were those in the wizarding world who thought that it would take a dark wizard, an innately evil child, to topple something like Lord Voldemort. Ethel sighed and looked around her, and there he was, walking quite slowly along the platform. He was very small and skinny, his hair askew, round glasses perched on his nose. There was a burst of static in her pocket and she fished out the primitive hand-held radio, angling her body away from Harry. "Ethel! Report!"

"I'm here Moody. I've got eyes on the target".

"Finally", Moody growled, "Could get the blasted thing to work. Observe, protect, you know the drill".

Ethel nodded, and then remembered that Moody couldn't see her. Honestly, muggle means of communication were so bloody annoying, "Affirmative", she said, and slipped it back into her pocket. One of the muggle guards was staring at her suspiciously, so she waved at him, drawing the attention of several other people, but it succeeded in deflecting suspicion, and the guard moved on at a leisurely pace along the platform.

He stopped as Harry Potter made a beeline toward him, panic in his eyes, "Umm, hello", he said in a very small voice, "Do you know where the train to Hogwarts is?"

"I'm sorry?" The guard peered down at Harry.

"It's a school", Harry said helpfully.

The guard frowned, "Never heard of it. What part of the county is it in, eh?"

Harry's eyes widened. Clearly he didn't know, "I'm… I'm not sure", he said.

"You don't know?" The guard asked incredulously.

Harry showed him a ticket, "It leaves at eleven".

The guard's eyes narrowed, "There aren't any trains leaving at eleven. Look, just get off to wherever you're supposed to be. I have better things to do with my time", and he slouched off, muttering furiously, leaving Harry looking quite lost.

Ethel wasn't a particularly sentimental person, but she felt a twinge of sympathy in her heart looking at that little boy, standing helplessly in the middle of the platform. She found herself debating whether or not to go over to him and show him the way, but there were bound to be Ministry people watching and other interested parties. She couldn't afford to be seen.

Harry suddenly spun around as a large family moved past him. Ethel looked at them and ducked out of sight, her heart hammering. The Weasleys, of course! "Mad-Eye", she hissed into the radio, "I can't do this. The Weasley's are here!"

"Nonsense", Moody growled, "You'll be fine. They won't think to see you there. The eyes see what the eyes want to see, and I know you know that". Ethel couldn't help but smirk. She'd pickpocketed Moody on this very platform a long time ago, simply because he'd thought she was on the other side of the country. He'd looked right at her, but his mind told him that it couldn't be here, so he'd turned away.

She watched as Harry approached them, looking extremely nervous, but Mrs Weasley turned around and started to explain to him quite kindly how to get onto the platform. Percy went first, running primly, if such a thing were possible. Ethel hadn't though so, but there he was, a shiny prefect badge pinned to his chest, prancing along. Fred and George, the twins, started up teasing their mother and eventually ran one after the other through the barrier. "Ethel", Moody's voice boomed from the radio, "Please, I need you to do this".

"Fine", she said, "But I want more than one drink later on".

Moody didn't reply, and Ethel watched as Harry Potter ran headlong at the barrier. She'd read up on the barrier to Platform 9 ¾ before going to Hogwarts, but it had still been a little terrifying, running into what essentially was another dimension, if you wanted to phrase it in simple terms. Her future had been so bright back then. They'd been trying to rope her into the Department of Mysteries for years before she threw everything everyone had ever given her back in their respective faces.

A red-haired boy followed Harry. He was Mrs Weasley's youngest son, Ronald, or something. He'd somehow managed to get a splodge of dirt on his nose. Mrs Weasley looked around the platform and Ethel turned her back and pretended to be scrutinising a map of the British rail system. When she turned back around they were gone, and the train was leaving in five minutes. _Five minutes_, she thought, _I can go in there for five minutes_.

She was a minor master at covert activity anyways, a skill earned by necessity and honed through desperation. So she sauntered over to the barrier and slipped through, no running, no leaning, just an unsteady sidestep and she was travelling through darkness for a second. Another step and she was on the platform, narrowly avoiding a projectile which turned out to be a very small owl, twittering excitedly as its owners tried to catch it, sweeping past her in a whirl of brightly coloured robes. "Come back here, Winston", the wizard in question said angrily.

Ethel moved through the crowd slowly, keeping her eyes on Harry Potter wheeling his trolley through the foray. He walked all the way to the end of the train, past carriages teeming with screaming teenagers gushing over pictures of Quidditch stars and swapping their holiday tales, carefully crafted on the long drive from whatever end of the country they'd had to travel from. There was only one Hogwarts Express.

Eventually Harry came to the end of the train and began to heave his trunk across the platform towards it. There weren't as many people at this end, so Ethel watched from the edge of the crowd, her fingers wrapped around her wand. If someone was going to do something, they do it now. While he was alone, while no one was watching. She was so fixated on Harry that she didn't see them coming. The twins, grinning and laughing as they discussed the pranks they could play with 'Lee's spider'. They paused when they saw Harry attempting to carry his trunk onto the train. They rushed forward at once to help him, introducing themselves and eyeing him curiously. They disappeared onto the rain and Ethel turned away, relieved. No one would attack a student on the Hogwarts Express. It had protections of its own.

She began to move through the platform and by the time she reached the barrier once again the train was leaving. She watched it go, wishing there was a time turner in the wizarding world that would let her go back far enough to change the choices she'd made, all those years ago.

That was when she heard his voice, floating archly across the platform, "Hiding, as usual, Ethel? Didn't the Dementors beat that out of you?"

And suddenly the people around her were falling silent, and looking at her, and the radio in her pocket let out a burst of static and she could hear Moody speaking urgently, "Ethel, get out of there", but it was already too late.

She looked him up and down, running her tongue over her teeth, "Hello Ignis", she said cheerily, while reaching for her wand.


End file.
